The first and the most salient of these is a pronounced effort to heighten style by imitation of Latin poets.  The presiding genius of the work is Virgil.  Pulci’s racy Florentine idiom; Boiardo’s frank and natural Lombard manner; Ariosto’s transparent and unfettered modern phrase, have been supplanted by a pompous intricacy of construction.

[Footnote 65:  Canto vi. 64-9.]

The effort to impose Latin rules of syntax on Italian is obvious in such lines as the following:[66]

    Torre ei l’immagin volle, che sospesa
      Era presso l’altar gemmato e sacro,
      Ove in chiaro cristal lampade accesa
      Fea lume di Ciprigna al simulacro: 

or in these: 

    Umida i gigli e le vermiglie rose
    Del volto, e gli occhi bei conversa al piano,
    Gli occhi, onde in perle accolto il pianto uscia,
    La giovinetta il cavalier seguia.

Virgil is directly imitated, where he is least worthy of imitation, in the details of his battle-pieces.  Thus:[67]

    Si riversa Isolier tremando al piano,
    Privo di senso e di vigore ignudo,
    Ed a lui gli occhi oscura notte involve,
    Ed ogni membro ancor se gli dissolve.

* * * * *

    Quel col braccio sospeso in aria stando,
    Ne lo movendo a questa o a quella parte,
    Che dalla spada cio gli era conteso,
    Voto sembrava in sacro tempio appeso.

* * * * *

    Mentre ignaro di cio che ’l ciel destine,
    Cosi diceva ancor, la lancia ultrice
    Rinaldo per la bocca entro gli mise,
    E la lingua e ’l parlar per mezzo incise.

This Virgilian imitation yields some glowing flowers of poetry in longer passages of description.  Among these may be cited the conquest of Baiardo in the second canto, the shipwreck in the tenth, the chariot of Pluto in the fourth, and the supper with queen Floriana in the ninth.

[Footnote 66:  Canto iii. 40, 45.]

[Footnote 67:  Canto ii. 22, iv. 28, 33.]

The episode of Floriana, while closely studied upon the Aeneid, is also a first sketch for that of Armida.  Indeed, it should be said in passing that Tasso anticipates the Gerusalemme throughout the Rinaldo.  The murder of Anselmo by Rinaldo (Canto XI.) forecasts the murder of Gernando by his namesake, and leads to the same result of the hero’s banishment.  The shipwreck, the garden of courtesy, the enchanted boat, and the charmed forest, are motives which reappear improved and elaborated in Tasso’s masterpiece.[68]

While Tasso thus sought to heighten diction by Latinisms, he revealed another specific quality of his manner in Rinaldo.  This is the inability to sustain heroic style at its ambitious level.  He frequently drops at the close of the octave stanza into a prosaic couplet, which has all the effect of bathos.  Instances are not far to seek:[69]